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Published online 29 April 2008 | 453, 11 (2008) | doi:10.1038/453011a
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If you go down to the woods today...
Theoretical physicists decamp to the countryside.
Texas
The Cook’s Branch Conservancy in Montgomery County, Texas, is a large nature reserve of pine forest and wildflower meadows that is home to wild turkeys, bald eagles and a large population of the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker. For a fortnight in April, it was home to a rather different rare bird: the theoretical physicist.
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Oh, how idyllic it is, this picture of very wealthy people from a wealthy society that want to give ever more to their already more than wealthy scientists (always the same ones!), so that these can "really freely" develop their advanced theories about the universe on the background of beautiful nature (accompanied by the finest tangible pleasures, of course!). The only "small" problem is that ALL those generously supported abstract "models" of official science plutocrats (quite prosperous even without any charity help to the "needy") are totally fruitless, deeply contradictory and lead to ever greater, widely recognised impasse of modern science. The sheer crisis in official fundamental physics and cosmology is so obvious and widely known that there is no sense to cite references (many details can be found e.g. in the recent collection of papers, http://www.universal-publishers.com/book.php?method=ISBN&book=1599429934 ). In such situation it seems reasonable indeed to support privately OTHER scientists and concepts that otherwise do NOT obtain sufficient (or even any!) attention of the official system and already because of that (but not only!) have a greater average probability of being able to bring those stagnating problem solutions, contrary to official theories that have just multiply PROVED their INability to solve problems and ensure science progress. So what do the top world billionaires, its real leaders actually do? Right the contrary, of course! They generously support already generously supported but totally failed scientifically approaches and people... [The article doesn't mention yet another such "advanced" initiative, FQXi (http://www.fqxi.org/ ), with the same property, generous private support for the same, failed theories and priests of official science (already additionally supported by e.g. the Perimeter Institute), always presenting themselves as "new" and "advanced", of course!] What's the moral of a story? "The rich always support the rich"? I prefer "the stupid always support the stupid". Sounds harder, but looking at the degree of those evident "contradictions" and their practical consequences for the entire knowledge system, it's difficult to avoid such conclusion. Charity can be as harmful as it can be helpful, why should it be so difficult to understand all those elementary relations and start finally asking for efficiency in knowledge production (consistent problem solutions instead of infinite fruitless "search" for them) as it's routinely done in all other spheres of human activity? Or is it because you still continue to believe that science is but an esoteric amusement for a few (self) "chosen" sages without big practical involvement? When can the rich, omnipotent leaders of this "developed" world – quickly becoming hyper-rich (as personally rich as a whole state) – start finally being simply reasonable in their practical choices? Is it too much to ask of them? See also http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.4562 , if you need further hints about why and how. Those poor lobsters could have better use than the bankrupt canonical theories and their ever more esoteric, abstract versions never really followed in detail even by professional colleagues, let alone interested general public... What is the sense to invest your (and our!) money into a kind of knowledge becoming ever more separated from and opposed to our tangible, unique reality it pretends to describe and therefore ever more incomprehensible to those individual and massive investors? Is "our science" for us or ... for whom?! For Hawking alone?! Looking at all the wasted billions (also on related super-expensive experiments!), let's hope that his pleasure of it is really big as it's the only positive result...
Although I agree with some of your points, your argument (or rant) may have more impact if you did not come across as quite so bitter. In the end what a private individual does with his own money (regardless of how said money was acquired as long as it was done so legally) is his own person choice. Personally, although I find this "seminar" to be in great excess, I would still prefer the money was spend on it as opposed to buying Mr. Mitchell another fleet of Bentleys.
"In the end what a private individual does with his own money (regardless of how said money was acquired as long as it was done so legally) is his own person choice." Wrong, Colin, as I explain, by the way, in the above comment. It all does influence science development, in one way or another, and I explain why this particular - and now strangely exclusive - way of massive private support of only provably, evidently inefficient doctrine is harmful. Of course, it is indirectly "harmful" also because the same money could be used much more efficiently and induce indeed a big progress, which is indeed so needed today, especially on the background of long absence of any progress. Therefore, this "double loss" is quite "bitter" indeed, objectively... It's also a question of "new responsibility" of that quickly growing community of rich and hyper-rich people. Your statement would be true rather for a "classical" world structure, with a reasonably "balanced" wealth differences. But we know we are in a quite different epoch now and those "private" intentions can change and produce EVERYTHING, especially in science, from a complete disaster to a complete bliss. So the freedom of legal private actions remains formally there, of course, but the spectrum of results and corresponding responsibility sort of "diverge to infinity". Another world, another responsibility, another choice... And all that huge "contrast" between different possible results of formally similar "science support" actions concentrates on this particular, very special moment, where all previous (fundamental) science approaches, unified in its unique official doctrine, become absolutely fruitless and ultimately frustrated... For anybody who is at least moderately interested in science development, professionally or as an amateur, such particular situation (multiply and objectively confirmed) would mean a really great, distinct border between the definitely ended past and (probably? hardly?) emerging future.
Andrei, if you are looking for a moral of the story, consider "the leaders are interesting to talk with the leaders", or "brilliant people like to share their ideas with brilliant people, because they do not think as common folks do". Try to be objective. Perhaps, you would invite different people for such a seminar, when you could afford it. So what? Tastes differ. There would be many who would say that you could spend your money "much more efficiently and induce indeed a big progress".
Andrei, I agree with your assessment. However, you and I should not be disturbed by things that we cannot change. The scriptures assure us of the outcome. Oliver K. Manuel, See: http://www.omatumr.com/three_truths.pdf
We're actually agree, Georgii, in our estimates of what's going on in fundamental science today, here and elsewhere: a totally subjective preference game, without any connection to (always promised) problem solution, i.e. scientific knowledge efficiency and progress as such. We only disagree in the +/- sign of the effect. It's a fact that in the absence of any real public control of quality, official science, in both its public-fund and private support modes, has been transformed to an unlimited series of prepaid, guaranteed pleasures for a happy few, unified in their very closed, "self-organised" circles according to absolutely subjective, personal preferences, like a "company of friends", or a profit-based mafia (because profits are involved!), or a half-secret intello-spirito-politico-financial conspiracy (cabbala, masonry, etc.). You can choose the analogy you prefer, but it's not really important (actually there are parts of any in those "top circles" of official science); what matters is a totally subjective, practically uncontrolled origin of real distribution of public and private financial support in modern science (tens and hundreds of billions yearly in fundamental fields alone) giving its evident, lasting and ever growing decadence (absence of any real progress and fantastic growth of the most grotesque, sectarian directions and beliefs). So, everybody can certainly choose what to do with his "own money" (why exactly some people get so much more of it than others, equally efficient in their work, is another question, neither without answer). However, if the obvious result is the ultimate degradation of our common knowledge that does not belong to this or another hot company of "self-organised" hedonists (whatever is its subjective opinion about it) but to the human civilisation as a whole, then it's difficult to remain only at the level of formal rights. The great common ship of knowledge and intelligence of this whole civilisation is sinking, just because its top managers prefer to amuse themselves and take all possible pleasures in any situation. If so, is it really their formal right to be as they are that matters most? Civilisation also has a very legal right to change the leading crew and get rid of parasites on board... This is precisely the choice we all have today and it would be really dangerous to ignore it. It is always free and everybody has a right to virtually everything, but the difference between results of different actions is disproportionally, "infinitely" great today. And it's not really the fact of "personal" decision origin that constitutes a problem, it's the particular kind of invariably made choice, that of evident, totally unreasonable, killing destruction. And such is the real choice of very "elitist" community of "brilliant" people, of course... With that "brilliance" of such "elites" one doesn't need enemies... To finish positively, Georgii, a much better choice certainly exists, for everybody, and it is quite real. But do I really need to explain why the real choice of a way of science development in this world belongs to only few its dwellers, contrary to much more homogeneous distribution of formal rights deciding nothing at all?
Thank you for the sources of true wisdom, Oliver. They evoke the eternal "terrible" question, to be or not to be, to act because we are conscious beings provided with an apparent capacity to change things and our life itself, or not to act because everything is already decided by a much more advanced "destiny" (or "divinity", etc.) and our clumsy, ridiculous fuss can only produce additional destruction and unnecessary suffering? The right choice would certainly depend on a particular case and thus remains basically subjective as a whole (even though in each particular case it can, theoretically, be optimised). Those humans/nations that tend "not to act" do not really seem happier than "acting" ones, but the reverse is also true! The so-called "active" attitude seems to gradually dominate and win everywhere today, but at the same time a civilisation performing that choice appears to fall into a spiralling degradation trip, though maybe by a pure coincidence... I think that the "ultimate", balanced wisdom of a "golden mean" kind would be to recognise a "multi-level", hierarchical structure of those choices and to avoid both arbitrary mixture and absolute separation of levels. It's true that at the most fundamental level "everything is decided" and the result is known (see e.g. "universal morals", etc.), but if less fundamental levels of our ordinary and professional life exist at all, this is because their respective choices are equally real and have their own meaning and value. They cannot normally change the "fundamental", predetermined "outcome" (let's hope!), but they can modify its "quality" and "importance" so to speak. For example, looking at today's situation, it's difficult to avoid an ironic conclusion that even if the ultimate winning position is well known, there will be surprisingly few of real candidates for the post. The magic future "Kingdom" of goodness imagined in various, religious and secular, dreams would suffer a risk of being desperately devoid of population, at least originating from this planet... It means, practically, that it's better to see all levels of choice and still insist "a little" on fundamentally less important but eventually meaningful "right choices" of our perishable existence, including its progress and its science. The crowd of self-organised liars is not really important, you're right, but the truth they can but ignore is, especially in our bifurcating epoch...
Andrei, the rights for "self-organizing" do matter, otherwise you bring us to a totalitarian society. There is a risk that your efforts on establishing "real public control" may simply end in enhanced scientific bureaucracy.
As you said, Georgii, an effectively totalitarian system of centralised bureaucratic "control" (completely corrupt inside) is just the modern organisation of science of "administrative" kind. It gives rise to a "self-organisation" into interested and omnipotent scientific mafias protecting only their personal ambitions and incomes, not the truth they promise to everybody while looking for support. So it's really something opposite to freedom of scientific research. What I do defend is a qualitatively different, "free-market" kind of organisation and real, non-centralised public control similar to the one we have for material production in free-market economy (see http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0403084 , http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.4562 for details). I don't know why you tend to confuse "public" and "totalitarian"; in general, they don't need to be related as they were in the communist version of totalitarianism (the latter can well coexist with the dominating private property, and you don't need to look too far for examples...). As I emphasised in previous comments here, science should and does have profound public aspect and links, already because its major product, knowledge, does belong to all people, in any sense. However, the perverted nature of the now dominating science organisation leads to effective "privatisation of truth", where only few of those "self-organised" and totally self-designated "sages" assume the right to absolutely control what they consider to be the uniquely acceptable scientific truth (taught e.g. in all public education establishments!), even when there is no progress in problem solution for decades, supernatural mysteries are "postulated" as the most fundamental basis of "objective" knowledge and keep growing, etc. So the problem is not who likes what, subjectively, the problem is that this, now dominating science organisation and practice has already brought us to a sheer crisis in knowledge content and practice. Therefore either we start changing it dramatically right now, or fundamental science won't survive as such. And returning to the above news article, serious private initiatives could play quite a positive role here, but only if they try to support new, problem-solving and creative tendencies, instead of increasing ever more the destructive domination of the evidently bankrupt official scientocracy.
Andrei and Georgii are both right! But the only lasting solution to the current mess in theoretical physics is to align yourself, personally, with truth. My friend, Hilton Radcliffe, did this in his new book, "The Virtue of Heresy: Confessions of a Dissident Astronomer." Let me explain: Truth is always "in your face." Every theoretician at Cook’s Branch Conservancy has to face these truths every day: - 1. A giant ball of iron rises in the east each day and moves across the sky. - 2. Repulsive forces between neutrons (n-n repulsion) in the solar core heats this giant ball of iron that sustains life on Earth. -3. Despite claims that CO2 cause global warming, Earth started to cool down as solar cycle #24 stalled and the solar surface was free of its 11-year periodic outbreak of surface blemishes (sunspots). -4. The well-established link of Earth's climate with sunspot blemishes is incompatible with the standard solar model (SSM) of a hydrogen-filled Sun, a cherished misconception of the theoreticians gathered in Texas. -5. Yesterday (Friday 2 May 2008) Robert Naeye of the Astrophysics Science Division of NASA issued a news report admitting that hydrogen has been observed accumulating on the surface of a neutron star and then violently starting to fuse into heavier elements. http://www.spacedai ly.com/reports/Stellar_Ticking_Time_Bomb_ Explodes_On_Cue_999.html . Truth #5 is important because it shows that a neutron star may become covered with hydrogen and changed into a "normal" appearing star with a surface coating of hydrogen, just like our Sun. The existence of this compact, highly energized neutron core in the Sun explains the empirically observed link between the current cooling of planet Earth, the absence of sunspots, and orbital motion of the planets around the Sun. In view of these unpleasant truths facing the theoreticians gathered in Texas each day, I suspect that their stay will be much less than idyllic! - Oliver K. Manuel